ActivityPub for GNU Social GSoC

Congrats to Diogo Cordeiro on getting a GSoC internship this summer to add ActivityPub to GNU Social! And thanks to GNU Social maintainer mmn-o for mentoring!

GNU Social is a social communication software used in federated social networks. In a federated social network user data stays in user's server instead of a centralized one. Given that, standards were created in order to make the communication between different softwares in a social federated context possible. ActivityPub is the newer and covers parts out of OStatus's specification, namely the app/client development. Because of this and other benefits, GNU Social is looking forward to support this new protocol. The project idea aims at developing a plugin (as GNU Social is true to the Unix-philosophy of small programs to do a small job) that will implement the ActivityPub Protocol in GNU Social.

ActivityPub is a real standard now!

ActivityPub was basically 3 years of my life, and there were points were I wasn't sure if the time and energy I was spending on it was worth it. I'm sure it was today. Thank you everyone who participated in the standards process, have implemented... or are going to implement! You made it all worth it!

On a related note, I stumbled upon a progress report of the FreedomBox project. In it they talk about integrating distributed social networks and in particular about Diaspora and GNU Social. How about someone bringing ActivityPub and accompanying implementations to their attention?

> This paper examines markets as a model for computation and
proposes a framework--agoric systems--for applying the power of market
mechanisms to the software domain.

> Algorithms that manage
processor time and storage in ways that enable both conventional
computation and market-based decision making will be useful in
establishing agoric systems: they lie at the boundary between design and
evolution. Algorithms are described in detail.

> This
comparison suggests that a form of ecosystem here termed a direct market
(as opposed to the indirect market of human society) is a promising
basis for computational ecosystems.

Other stories indicate that attacks were on voter registration systems rather than the voting systems themselves. As a former poll judge, I can easily say that that's the attack surface you gotta worry about. If you don't have an accurate voter roll even the dead can vote perhaps repeatedly in that Chicago way.

I think auctioning off time outside of work and sleep seems pretty exhausting, especially adding the extra time management work. But hey, I think it'll be an interesting piece of performance art regardless. ;)

@cwebber@identi.ca maybe it's time for a hypertext environment built on org mode and ipfs. More seriously we need a way to balance protecting user freedom & privacy with a fair to everyone funding method

I was wondering this morning, for people who are ok with a neo-nazi rally because "well it's free speech"... what percentage of those people would be okay with an ISIS rally? White terrorism gets a pass.

It's called getting them right where we want them...for facial recognition and data capture. You don't necessarily need a warrant to take pictures at an open-air event where faces and people are openly visible to the naked eye. If they self-identify now, it can help with establishing motive if criminal acts occur later.

I don't think one has to be "ok with" people saying repulsive things in order to believe that it should be their right. And I say "right" in the sense that it's the sort of thing that the government shouldn't have the power to stop.

That said, making actual (even if vaguely specified) threats is something that can and should be prosecuted.

And yeah, if ISIS were to hold a rally without engaging in or threatening violence, I'd be all for it. Well, all for not stopping it anyhow.

Dunno about the US, but in Sweden both neonazis and ISIS fans -- and other radical islamists -- hold demos. At the point where they (both) encourage people to destroy the state of Israel or encourage violence against jews in general, they get prosecuted for hate speech.

As a side note, I definitely think the Social Community Group has been well served by using Mumble; it's libre and everyone seems to be able to use it without difficulty. I'd love to see more standards groups pick it up.